In clinical environments, a patient may be connected to one or more items of medical equipment by a number of tubes of various kinds. For instance, breathing circuits, pressure or data lines may connect the patient to equipment such as ventilators or anaesthesia machines. As a result, a multitude of tubes of varying lengths and diameters may be draped over the bed or operating table on which the patient lies, as well as over equipment in the vicinity of the bed or operating table and over the patient himself.
Not least for reasons of patient safety, it is considered good practice for such a multiplicity of tubes to be organized into tidy and manageable groups, and many attempts have been made in the past to facilitate management of medical tubes in this way. Many different designs of clip have been proposed, the effects of which have been to couple together bundles of tubes into a group. Other designs have included the facility to fix the clip to an external support, such as a metal clamp.
Hitherto, no entirely satisfactory system for the management of medical tubes has been provided, and it is an object of this invention to provide a system that improves upon previously-disclosed attempts to address this need.